We’re not liv­ing in Utopia

RE: City mulling free air con­di­tion­ers (May 25)

Ex­cuse me if this let­ter dis­plays some cyn­i­cism but aren’t the mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions just a year away? And the faint sound of pan­der­ing for votes is emerg­ing from its four-year hi­ber­na­tion. I’m re­fer­ring to the propo­si­tion Sam Merulla has put forth: a mo­tion to coun­cil to sup­ply air con­di­tion­ers to low-in­come peo­ple who due to var­i­ous rea­sons can­not cope with the sum­mer heat. Well, on the sur­face, this is very al­tru­is­tic and com­mend­able and I wish we all could live in utopia but it is not pos­si­ble.

In light of all the ma­jor con­cerns Hamil­ton is fac­ing with in­fras­truc­ture pri­or­i­ties, so­cial hous­ing, sewage and waste short­falls, and not to men­tion the taxes we don’t even know we’ll in­cur with LRT. (Did I for­get hy­dro and cap and trade?) After the ini­tial cost of pur­chas­ing these units who in­curs the ex­pense of main­tain­ing them? Who pays the in­creased hy­dro cost, the land­lords or tax­pay­ers?

As I said, this is not utopia and this coun­cil needs to think pru­dence and ad­dress the needs not the wants.